Love and Loss
by cmr2014
Summary: You don't get love without the loss that will eventually come with it.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 13,149 days ago, an angel graced this world with her presence. For too short a time, I was blessed to be part of her life. There may come another love, but there will never come another her. I think Steve Earle said it best –

"I'm nothin' without you

It don't matter what I do

If I win, or if I lose

Sweetheart, I'm nothin' without you"

 **Love and Loss**

 _Vash the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose._

" _Vash?"_

" _What's up?"_

 _Meryl Stryfe's head was down, voice quiet. "I was wondering…if…well, maybe…" Then her head snapped up firmly as she cast aside indecision, the same look in her eyes as when she charged into chaos, her voice now strong and steady. "Would you like to go out with me?"_

Vash wasn't drinking for the drink. No matter how much he wanted it to work the way it was supposed to, his physiology would not allow it. But there was one effect it would allow.

He was drinking for the hangover.

Somebody bumped into him. Sober or drunk, it didn't matter. It was an excuse, and that was all that mattered.

"Sorry, buddy." The man's voice was only slightly slurred.

"Your mother's a whore."

The man turned around slowly, not quite trusting his ears when he had a few drinks in him. "What did you say?"

Vash stood up, looking him dead in the eye. The target was shorter than him, as most people were, but solid. He would make a nice start. "I said your mother's a whore." It was said calmly, deliberately, a specifically calculated insult.

And it worked.

"Thought so." The man's punch was solid, barely affected by the alcohol in his system. He may have been buzzed, but he was used to fighting in levels of intoxication far worse than this.

Vash took it squarely, firing back with a hard shot to the man's bicep. He wasn't looking to injure anyone. Quite the contrary.

More people joined in. Vash, previously an expert at avoiding fights, had now mastered the admittedly not-hard-to-master art of starting them.

He had it coming. Should never have said yes to that first date with Meryl. If he hadn't, they never would have gotten involved. Never would have gotten married.

She never would have taken the assassin's bullet meant for his heart.

A fist drove into his stomach. Fricking amateur hour, should've been aimed at the solar plexus or to the left or right, where the organs were. But it still sloshed the alcohol in his stomach, and that brought on a little hurt.

Brass knuckles impacted on his jaw. This was more like it. He rolled with the impact, coming back with a weak kick that connected just enough for whoever it hit to think he was fighting back. Felt a hard shot to his liver, another one from behind hitting his kidney. Wasn't long before he started tasting blood in his mouth, felt it spurting from his nose, running into his eyes from some decent welts that had opened up.

This was good. There were some experienced brawlers here among the amateurs. They knew how to dish out some pain.

The assassin had given himself away somehow. To this day Vash didn't know what had tipped Meryl to the killer's presence, far enough away that he himself had only just picked up the glint of a scope. Had she detected something he didn't, or somehow just sensed it? Either way, she threw herself across him. Of all people, his wife knew more than most that he could protect himself, that he could survive the seemingly impossible; but of all people, his wife's love for him made protecting him from immediate danger a reflexive instinct that was faster than rational thought. So the bullet addressed to him delivered itself to her instead, entering her head and penetrating the front of her skull neatly. But rather than going through to him, it instead ricocheted off the rear of her skull and blew out the side of her head, taking most of her brain with it.

He remembered exactly what had happened, how it felt, even all these years later. He lived it fresh every time he slept.

Should've picked up the scope faster. Should've pushed her away from him the instant she was in the line of fire. Should've been faster, better, known what would happen before it happened and acted accordingly. Should've done just _something_ that would have kept her alive and with him.

Should've. Could've. Didn't.

Vash was bodily heaved out of the bar, tumbling into the middle of the street and collapsing there in the sand. He was bruised, battered, and bloody. His face looked more like tenderized meat than a face. Though not broken, his jaw was going to be swollen in the morning. Felt like some ribs _were_ broken, couldn't breathe without his chest being squeezed in a vise. Every major organ felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.

Good.

The hangovers. The provoked beatings. The misery and pain. He deserved it all.

This was his punishment for being alive instead of her.


	2. Chapter 2

_DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose._

 _Vash the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose._

" _Vash?"_

" _What's up?"_

 _Meryl Stryfe's head was down, voice quiet. "I was wondering…if…well, maybe…" Then her head snapped up firmly as she cast aside indecision, the same look in her eyes as when she charged into chaos, her voice now strong and steady. "Would you like to go out with me?"_

"Hello, broom-head."

Meryl's voice was strong, that was good. And she knew him, that was also good. Today was one of her lucid days. They were getting fewer and fewer.

"Hey, insurance girl." Vash sat on the bed next to his aged wife.

He didn't know if a person was granted just one true love, as some claimed. Perhaps there would be others.

What he did know was Meryl was his first time falling in love, and it hurt to so slowly be losing her like this. He didn't know which was worse, waiting for her time to come or the days, rapidly increasing in frequency, where she didn't know him. Once upon a time, back on Earth, scientific advances in medicine had stamped out neurological conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia; that knowledge had been lost in the Great Fall, however, and doctors were once again back to doing the best they could against impossible circumstances.

Damn it, this hurt. He'd lost people before, but this was another kind of hurt entirely. His love for Meryl was not the same as the love he held for other humans. This love, and consequently this ordeal, was more personal, penetrating deeper than even Wolfwood's death had.

"What are you thinking about?" Meryl asked him.

"How beautiful you are."

She had enough strength in her weak body to whack him on the arm. "Liar. I was always plain, and any beauty I may have had is long gone."

"You were never plain," he corrected. "Everyone else was just visually impaired – they only saw skin deep. You were pretty, but your real beauty was and still is in your character. Your honor. Those drew me in. Your looks were just a bonus."

She laughed weakly. "Just what a girl wants to hear, that her looks were the last thing a guy paid attention to."

Vash looked deep into her eyes, trying to see through to her soul, fully aware that this could be her last good day. "I paid attention to everything about you, Meryl. If you know nothing else…know that I love you."

She gestured to the bedside table. "Hand me that recorder."

"How did you know I always wanted to hear that as an answer to 'I love you'?" His voice was light, but he did as asked, taking her hand and closing it firmly around the recorder.

"Here's my answer, something you can take with you to remember me by." She pressed RECORD. It took a moment, but her voice was even stronger than at the start of this conversation. It was her voice as it had been so many decades ago in her prime, confident and bold. "Know that I love you, Vash, my too-tall broom-head." Hit STOP.

"I'll never have any trouble remembering you," Vash promised. "But I may wear that recording out listening to it."

"I'll make others. I won't leave you without my voice in your ear. You'll be able to be as annoyed as you were with me always on your tail."

"Want to know a secret?" She nodded. "I was never really annoyed. It just was too much fun pushing your buttons."

She grinned. After so many years of marriage, it still reflexively brought a smile to his own face.

A soft voice at the door said, "I hate to interrupt, but it's time for medicine."

Meryl made a face at the thought that medicine was going to do anything but at best delay the inevitable.

"Be a good girl, now," Vash chided. "Take your medicine. If it helps, I'll give you a spoonful of sugar." She stuck her tongue out at him.

A spoonful of sugar didn't help. Neither did the medicine for much longer. The last days were the worst, the ones where all memory of him was lost.

Meryl Stryfe's brain didn't recognize her own husband. Even knowing that it wasn't her fault, it still stung.

But when she passed, it was with him by her bedside, her hand in his. Before the life flickered out of her eyes, the words that followed her into eternity were, "I love you, Meryl Stryfe."

Vash had Meryl's words, many recordings. He would be able to hear her voice for a long time to come. That was good, far more than he'd been left to remember Rem by, and he treasured hearing her voice speak of her love for him every day.

But no matter those precious moments, no matter how much he might grin and lie to everyone that he was fine – his life still sucked without her.


	3. Chapter 3

DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose.

Vash the Stampede was already well aware of the woman standing next to him. He had not addressed her yet out of respect, letting her speak to him or not as she chose.

"Vash?"

"What's up?"

Meryl Stryfe's head was down, voice quiet. "I was wondering…if…well, maybe…" Then her head snapped up firmly as she cast aside indecision, the same look in her eyes as when she charged into chaos, her voice now strong and steady. "Would you like to go out with me?"

Vash saw the paths open up. The different possibilities if he said yes. Whether to violence or time, he would lose her. He had kept away from precisely such a thing as this for all his life, not just because of the threat of Knives, but because he wasn't sure he was up to the challenge of loving someone just to lose them.

He was focusing on the end, though. His eyes caught hers, and looking into them he saw the middle.

The places they would go together. The dates they would go on. Cooking together. Moonlight picnics. Breakfast in bed. Target shooting competitions, teasing each other about this or that shot or their choice of ammunition or their chosen weapons. Long conversations about nothing in particular. Arguments about the budget and groceries and what books to read to each other. Fights over nothing, just for the ensuing make-ups.

Vash on one knee. Meryl in a white dress.

A life together.

The end would come, somehow, some way. He was going to lose her.

But damn it, he realized, not before he loved her with all his heart and soul.

"Hell yes I would, Meryl."


End file.
